I can keep a secret if I’ve done something I’m ashamed of. But it’s hard to keep a secret about something that wouldn’t expose my less-than-perfect real self.

I’m not a good liar, which makes it even harder to keep some secrets. I’m always inadvertently revealing something I’m not supposed to talk about—a Christmas present, a surprise. The memory is iffy, too, so I’m liable to forget that something is supposed to be a secret.

It’s the secrets I can keep that fester and grow toxic, make relationships awkward and . . .

Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “secret.”

6 Responses to Secret

Secret. You can’t even say the word without whispering it through tight lips. Rarely a good thing, a secret is something you are required to keep. Whether it be to keep pain from someone else or pain from yourself.

A secret is not an embarassment, though. Embarassments are just things you don’t want people to know. A secret is something people can’t know. Perhaps that’s why it’s hard to keep them. ‘Don’t tell anyone!’ is a powerful challenge. A challenge I usually fail at.

“Can you keep this?” handing her the handgun reeking of cordite.
“Sure.”
“And this?” holding up his blood soaked t-shirt.
“Yeah, I can keep anything… except a secret.“
They laughed.
That was his flashback as he sat at the defense table and listened to her on the witness stand.

A cousin, much younger, in Louisiana, a girl named Sharon. What does she look like, what color is her hair? Does she like to laugh? Is she married, does she have children? Her existence was recorded on a yellowed birth announcement, 1/24/70. Her past and present is wrapped in secret.

The initiate stood in the vail for many hours, bound, hooded, and blindfolded. In a distance he could hear the drone of the monotone chant signaling that the next phase of his passage into The Order had begun.

“Fire,” he thought to himself, “the next test has to do with fire.” No sooner had he finished this thought then an unfamiliar voice spoke quietly into his ear, “To learn the secret of the Stone Crypt, one must pass through the Three Fires.”